Chapter 80: Chapter 80: Crawler and Gold
Zhuge Yunxue was a scout, and she also had grenades in hand, so she immediately pulled out a grenade.
She directly pulled the ring off her grenade and tossed it into the second-floor window!
At the instant the grenade exploded, a red figure leaped out from the second-floor window!
A sense of danger immediately emerged!
"Open fire!"
The light machine guns of the army soldiers in the guard platoon beside her immediately roared to life.
A web of firepower from over a dozen machine guns caused the red figure to get hit instantly!
A mist of blood rose, and the red creature emitted a scream.
The screeching sound, like that of a mouse amplified hundreds of times, stirred the zombies on the other side of the river.
Yet, despite the dense firepower, it did not immediately kill the monster.
Beside Ye Fan, Xiaotian and a few other military dogs barked fiercely, impatiently wanting to pounce forward, clearly sensing the danger from the monster.
"Cease fire, release the dogs!"
Seeing the waste of ammunition, Ye Fan simply let the military dogs take care of it.
The soldiers ceased fire, and Xiaotian, along with two other Three-Star Military Dogs, four massive dogs in total, charged out.
At this moment, Ye Fan also got a clear look at the monster.
It was over three meters long, all fiery red, with four limbs on the ground, a massive tail trailing behind, a flat head at the front, and a long tongue flicking out from its mouth.
Its body was pitted with bullet marks but none were fatal, and its appearance was extremely grim and horrifying.
"Crawler!"
Ye Fan immediately found the creature familiar, like a monster from Resident Evil.
This was likely a zombie that had evolved, but Ye Fan did not know how it had evolved.
Having traveled through many places, it was his first time encountering a Crawler.
Given its swift movements, it could possibly have evolved from an Agile Zombie, but why was there only one?
After seeing the zombies in the meteorite pit, he knew zombies could definitely evolve further, but none within the pit had completed their evolution. What caused this one?
His gaze searched over the Crawler.
"Hmm! Is that a car key?"
Ye Fan suddenly noticed a piece of cloth on the Crawler, likely from its original clothes.
After the body enlarged and ripped through the clothing, a pocket remained.
Inside the pocket, a chain was exposed, revealing part of a car key, suggesting a brand.
Ye Fan immediately thought of the overturned vehicle he had seen outside.
"Could this Crawler be the driver?"
"Then his mutation couldn’t have been more than five days ago! How did he evolve to this stage in five days?"
Ye Fan conjectured in his heart, but the battle continued on that side.
The four Three-Star Military Dogs attacked the Crawler from different angles like a wolf pack.
Though each Three-Star Military Dog was an extremely formidable combat unit, it was clear one or even two alone weren’t a match for the Crawler.
However, working together, the injured Crawler was visibly outmatched.
This creature, with agility as its focus, was vulnerable to the dogs’ attacks. As it attempted a frenzied breakout to no avail, it was already too late; Xiaotian led the pack in gripping its tail tightly.
The Sniper’s successive gunshots rang out, and after the immobilized Crawler was hit by several bullets, it finally died.
"Open up its head!"
The Engineer accompanying the team went over and sliced open the Crawler’s head, extracting a pale blue crystal from within.
Ye Fan smiled, confirming his suspicions that this creature’s head housed a crystal.
After a few observations, he had deduced that crystals only appear in the heads of strong zombies or Mutant Beasts, not in ordinary or even Mutated Zombies.
Yet this time, Ye Fan wouldn’t swallow the crystal. He would keep it until he could research it after the Combat Laboratory appeared.
Lastly, Ye Fan pondered whether the Crawler was male or female, or perhaps its gender.
But sensing the peculiar gazes from Zhuge Yunxue and a few female companions, he abandoned the idea.
"Let’s go, enter the store, the moment of harvest is near!"
The team entered the store, with some jewelry store clerks inside, mostly young females in life.
Before Ye Fan issued commands, Zhuge Yunxue, Xiao Jing, and He Xiaoting drew pistols and started shooting at the clerks behind the counter.
If zombies were categorized by appearance, those slightly prettier would be the first to be shot by them.
Zhuge Yunxue was excusable, being a scout and Ye Fan’s guard, killing zombies was her duty, but what was up with Xiao Jing and He Xiaoting?
Though medics were armed, this wasn’t in their job description.
Ye Fan felt like they were being busybodies, like dogs meddling with mice.
The three women did a circuit up and down, thoroughly clearing out the so-called "beautiful" zombies as if relieved, returning to their normal state.
Zhuge Yunxue returned to Ye Fan’s side, glaring fiercely at Shen Ruihui nearby.
Shen Ruihui was left bewildered, clueless about his supposed wrongdoing.
Ye Fan’s attention was quickly drawn by the jewelry around.
The jewelry store was splattered with blood, but Ye Fan had grown used to that sight.
All he could see was gold!
Row after row of counters with dazzling gold inside, Ye Fan had never found gold so appealing.
Without him needing to say anything, the soldiers started collecting.
The counters were smashed open, boxes of jewelry piled together, forming a small golden mound on the ground.
Gold, platinum, white gold, silver, diamond rings, jade bracelets, pearl necklaces!
Within twenty minutes, the several hundred square meters store was looted clean, leaving a huge pile of jewelry before Ye Fan.
Ye Fan placed his hand on the jewelry pile, and Nana’s notification sounded immediately.
"Precious metal gems detected, can be converted into System Money, would the officer like to convert?"
"Convert all of it!"
"Congratulations, officer, you’ve received 295,708 Gold!"
Ye Fan was overjoyed, feeling it was a lot, but not expecting this much.
With a total value close to three hundred kilograms of gold, this profit exceeded any he had previously made.
Adding to his funds, Ye Fan’s total amount reached 410,000!
"A big operation comes with big rewards, the team has grown, it’s time to conquer the town!"
With such an influx of money, Ye Fan’s coffers were full, covering costs for building walls, watchtowers, and such for the base, and maxing out the camp’s troop types.
But he didn’t immediately deploy, a little delay didn’t matter, he would deal with it upon returning.
With the jewelry store thoroughly looted, ensuring nothing was missed, Ye Fan led his team out.
The zombies on the other side of the river continued to howl outside, ignored by Ye Fan as he headed to the bridge.
The bridge here had been completely blown up, with even scorch marks from the explosion visible.
"Who could have blown up the bridge? The survivor base on the other side of Coal City doesn’t have this capability."
This bridge wasn’t small, appearing solidly constructed, and achieving this would be beyond ordinary survivors or standard forces.
Even Ye Fan’s current team would struggle to bring down the bridge as they lacked such explosives as detonators.
Clearly, within Huacheng, there must be a powerful survivor faction.
But presently, Ye Fan had no time to investigate. Having been out for two days, construction materials should be arriving back at base, so he needed to return to build his base immediately.
The entire team got in their cars, leaving Qinghe Town via the cleared route.
By evening, Ye Fan returned to the base.
From afar, seeing the lights at the resource recovery station, Ye Fan felt comforted.
Although the base was still impoverished, it would soon transform significantly.
Heavy trucks were shuttling back and forth, unloading supplies. Checking the Red Alert interface, Ye Fan noticed the resources at the recovery station were steadily increasing.
Just give him one day, and he’ll cause an earth-shattering transformation here!